Many persons rely on modern day communication networks to reach out and obtain expert advice, health advice, and emergency care, for example. These sources of information can be wide spread throughout a city, a workplace, a country, or across international boundaries. Conventionally, the commonplace method of reaching numerous experts involved either serially placing or initiating multiple phone calls to the plurality of experts or alternatively, employing a group call with specialized audio processing or phone equipment. The experts would for fee dial into a teleconference established over either secure or non-secure phone lines. A previous message of some sort, for example, an email or calendar item would direct the experts to call into the teleconference. The experts would employ a conference code for access. This method involves a considerable cost to maintain and add likely new users to the conference model.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system for managing multiple simultaneously placed calls.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.